I enjoy quite alot to play on this server as well as the other. The lower loading times really adds to playability. Also the fact that it is some years in the future from the other map makes that one can practice stuf and get prepared for when the other map catches up.

Oh, crap, I have updated the pakset beyond this server, but I dont keep the old ones due to them being quite big

Seems like a new player (company name "admin please delete this company") has spent a lot of money building loads of ship canals and messing up the rivers near Walminster. But because they are company owned they can't be deleted. they've not been done particularly efficiently either (not following the existing river, so lots of forge costs).

The small rivers were fine how they were, maybe we could get them tidied back?

I'd already ruled out upgrading them to canals as not financially viable, was planning a railway instead, but what I built seems to have vanished, I assume there was a server restart.

1. In general, the inclination of some players to reserve vast tracts of land using mothballed ways. While this may be possible to imagine as a realistic simulation of something of some sort, in theory it can be highly detrimental to any efforts by other, as it poses limitations on any new route that should intersect or otherwise collide with these railroads. It should be debated whether the game might be changed somehow to discourage such activity, or that the server administrator must somehow regulate it, or else that it should not be regarded negatively at all. I'm thinking, perhaps land should be much more expensive to build on.

2. Lakes are included as public right of way. As such, they may not be obstructed without leaving reasonable passage for ships of any kind. This goes for all but the most insignifcant bodies of water, which in any case connect no settlements or industry. Other than that, the concept of drying up water on a narrow strip inside the lake, and building a water-level road on it, seems quite absurd to me, and should definitely be heavily discouraged, if not eliminated altogether by the game mechanics.

I am not sure what might be done about the building of mothballed ways. As to lakes, may I ask what players are doing to destroy them? One possibility may be to disallow non-public players from editing the landscape of anany water tiles.

The Canterbury map is covered with tiny ponds with no cities on. I terraformed across a couple because it seemed entirely sensible to do so. If you want a precedent in the real world, Chat Moss on the Liverpool and Manchester railway was treated that way.

There are many precedents for draining marshes and reclaiming land from the sea, from the middle ages onwards. E.g. Brading Harbour was reclaimed by the railway and harbour improvement company.

I made sure there weren't any established lines operating that the work would adversely affect.

I am building my railway in sections then mothballed each temporarily whilst the whole route is incomplete, and there aren't any station facilities in place yet. I still haven't finished it yet, as I haven't had the time. I'm not "reserving" anything, it just takes time to build. And I know that decent steam engines won't arrive until the 1830s.

I've been indecisive about exactly how it was best to connect the railway to the shipping lines. Building it in sections allowed me to 'survey' the best route for good civil engineering, building the tricky bits first. If you just build outward from one end its hard to do that.

I should consider getting some monitoring/alert system for the server.

Sadly, I'm not even sure how to report this 'out of memory' error, which causes the frequent crashes, as there isn't anything in patricular that seems to be causing it, with the 12GB of the server seemingly at least 50% free at the time of the crash (when I did manage to check this, sort of). I did notice this also occurs on my home machine, the one I use to play, perhaps other players have also had this error?

I should consider getting some monitoring/alert system for the server.

Sadly, I'm not even sure how to report this 'out of memory' error, which causes the frequent crashes, as there isn't anything in patricular that seems to be causing it, with the 12GB of the server seemingly at least 50% free at the time of the crash (when I did manage to check this, sort of). I did notice this also occurs on my home machine, the one I use to play, perhaps other players have also had this error?

I have noticed this. There are three separate issues here. Firstly, the Windows build is compiled as a 32-bit executable, meaning that it can only access 4Gb of memory. Secondly, large Simutrans-Extended maps inherently take a lot of memory. Thirdly, I suspect that there is a memory leak, causing the program to consume more memory than it needs to consume.

I will look at fixing the memory leak when I get home from my Christmas holiday. Switching to a 64-bit build for Windows may take more time, and will hopefully be less urgent once the memory leak is fixed, but will probably have to be done at some point next year.

I have noticed this. There are three separate issues here. Firstly, the Windows build is compiled as a 32-bit executable, meaning that it can only access 4Gb of memory. Secondly, large Simutrans-Extended maps inherently take a lot of memory. Thirdly, I suspect that there is a memory leak, causing the program to consume more memory than it needs to consume.

I will look at fixing the memory leak when I get home from my Christmas holiday. Switching to a 64-bit build for Windows may take more time, and will hopefully be less urgent once the memory leak is fixed, but will probably have to be done at some point next year.

I see. In that case, CPU usage aside, I gather that I can run at least 2 parallel games on the 12GB windows machine, am I right?

Asaphxiix, could we update the server to use James' latest nightly pak, so that we get all the new early-period railway vehicles he just made? It would seem a very timely effort on his part, and a good opportunity to test them?

Notice: The server virtual machine subscription is up for renewal in 4 days. While I do enjoy serving the community this way, this is just a bit hefty for me, as the server costs 40$ a month to run, with the relatively high sum due to higher CPU, RAM and Windows. Perhaps this could be dialed down a bit, unless it is decided to open yet another online game, which currently does not seem to be merited.

If you enjoy playing on the server, or you want to encourage it, you are welcome to donate to its running to asaph.talmor@gmail.com on PayPal.

I will publish any donation here anonymously or by name as you choose, so if your donation was not published, you will know that I am a thief.

I will accept any donations up to a total amount of $120, i.e. 3-months worth of server. When this amount is reached, fund raising will be suspended for one month.